SCG III, Chapter 65:  That God preserves things in being

1. FROM God's governing all things by His providence it follows that He preserves them in being.* For everything whereby things gain their end is part of the governing of them. But to the last end which God intends, namely, the divine goodness, things are directed not only by their activities, but also by the fact of their existence, because by that mere fact they bear some likeness to the divine goodness. Therefore it is proper to divine providence to keep things in being.

2. As a work of art presupposes a work of nature, so a work of nature presupposes a work of God creating: for the material of artificial things is from nature, and the material of natural things is through creation of God. But artificial things are preserved in being by virtue of natural things, as a house by the solidity of its stones. Therefore natural things are not preserved in being otherwise than through the power of God.*

3. The impression made by an agent does not remain in the effect when the action of the agent ceases, unless that impression turns into and becomes part of the nature of the effect. Thus the forms and properties of things generated remain in them to the end, after the generation is done, because they are made natural to the things: in like manner habits are difficult to change, because they turn into nature. But dispositions, bodily impressions, and emotions, though they remain for some little while after the action of the agent, do not remain permanently: they find place in the subject as being on the way to become part of its nature.* But what belongs to the nature of a superior genus in no way remains after the action of the agent is over, as light does not remain in a transparent medium after the source of light is taken away.* But being is not the nature or essence of anything created, but of God alone (B. I, Chapp. XXI, XXII). Nothing then can remain in being when the divine activity ceases.*

4. Concerning the origin of things there are two theories, one of faith, that things had a first commencement, and were then brought into being by God; the other the theory of sundry philosophers, that things have emanated (fluxerint) from God from all eternity. On either theory we must say that things are preserved in being by God. For if things are brought into being by God after not being, the being of things must be consequent upon the divine will; and similarly their not being, because He has permitted things not to be when He willed and made things to be when He willed. Things therefore are, so long as He wills them to be. His will then is the upholder of creation. On the other hand, if things have emanated from God from all eternity, it is impossible to assign any time or instant in which first they emanated from God. Either then they were never produced by God at all, or their being is continually coming forth from God so long as they exist.

Hence it is said: Bearing up all things by the word of his power (Heb. i, 3). And Augustine says (De Gen. ad lit. iv, 12): "The power of the Creator, and the might of the Almighty and All-containing, is the cause of the permanence of every creature. If this power ever ceased from governing creation, all the brave show of creatures would at once cease, and all nature would fall to nothing. It is not like the case of one who has built a house, and goes away, and still the structure remains, when his work has ceased and his presence is withdrawn. The world could not endure for the twinkling of an eye, if God retired from the government of it."

Hereby is excluded the theory of some Doctors of the Law of the Moors, who, by way of sustaining the position that the world needs the preserving hand of God, have supposed all forms to be accidents,* and that no accident lasts for two successive instants, the consequence being that the formation of things is always in the making, -- as though a thing needed no efficient cause except while it is in the making. Some of them are further said to hold that the indivisible atoms,* out of which they say that all substances are composed, -- which atoms, according to them, alone are indestructible, -- could last for some short time, even though God were to withdraw His guidance from the world. Some of them further say that things would not cease to be but for God causing in them an accident of 'ceasing.'* All which positions are manifestly absurd. 

SCG III, Chapter 66: That nothing gives Being except in as much as it acts in the Power of God

1. NOTHING gives being except in so much as it is an actual being. But God preserves things in actuality.

2. The order of effects is according to the order of causes. But among all effects the first is being: all other things, as they proceed from their cause, are determinations of being. Therefore being is the proper effect of the prime agent, and all other things act inasmuch as they act in the power of the prime agent. Secondary agents, which are in a manner particular determinants of the action of the prime agent, have for the proper effects of their action other perfections determinant of being.*

3. What is essentially of a certain nature, is properly the cause of that which comes to have that nature only by participation.* But God alone is being by essence, all others are beings by participation. Therefore the being of everything that exists is an effect properly due to God; so that anything that brings anything else into being does so insomuch as it acts in the power of God.

Hence it is said: God created all things to be (Wisd. i, 14). 

SCG III, Chapter 67: That God is the Cause of Activity in all Active Agents

AS God not only gave being to things when they first began to be, but also causes being in them so long as they exist (Chap. LXV); so He did not once for all furnish them with active powers, but continually causes those powers in them, so that, if the divine influx were to cease, all activity would cease.

Hence it is said: Thou hast wrought all our works in us, O Lord (Isa. xxvi, 12). And for this reason frequently in the Scriptures the effects of nature are put down to the working of God, because He it is that works in every agent, physical or voluntary: e.g., Hast thou not drawn me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? with skin and flesh thou hast clothed me, with bones and sinews thou hast put me together (Job x, 10, 11). 

SCG III, Chapter 68:  That God is everywhere and in all things

1. AN incorporeal thing is said to be in a thing by contact of power. Therefore if there be anything incorporeal fraught with infinite power, that must be everywhere. But it has been shown (B. I Chap. XLIII) that God has infinite power. He is therefore everywhere.

2. Since God is the universal cause of all being, in whatever region being can be found there must be the divine presence.

3. An efficient cause must be together with its proximate and immediate effect. But in everything there is some effect which must be set down for the proximate and immediate effect of God's power: for God alone can create (B. II, Chap. XXI); and in everything there is something caused by creation, -- in corporeal things, primordial matter; in incorporeal beings, their simple essences (B. II, Chapp. XV, sq). God then must be in all things, especially since the things which He has once produced from not-being to being He continually and always preserves in being (Chap. LXV).

Hence it is said: I fill heaven and earth (Jer. xxiii, 24): If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art there (Ps. cxxxviii, 8).

God is indivisible, and wholly out of the category of the continuous: hence He is not determined to one place, great or small, by the necessity of His essence, seeing that He is from eternity before all place: but by the immensity of His power He reaches all things that are in place, since He is the universal cause of being. Thus then He is whole everywhere, reaching all things by His undivided power. * 

SCG III, Chapter 69:  Of the Opinion of those who withdraw from Natural Things their Proper Actions

SOME have taken an occasion of going wrong by thinking that no creature has any action in the production of natural effects, -- thus that fire does not warm, but God causes heat where fire is present. So Avicebron* in his book, The Fountain of Life, lays it down that no body is active, but the power of a subsistent spirit permeating bodies does the actions which seem to be done by bodies. But on such theories many awkward consequences follow.

1. If no inferior cause, and especially no corporeal cause, does any work, but God works alone in all agencies, and God does not change by working in different agencies; no difference of effect will follow from the difference of agencies in which God works: but that is false by the testimony of sense.

2. It is contrary to the notion of wisdom for anything to be to no purpose in the works of the wise. But if created things in no way work to the production of effects, but God alone works all effects immediately, to no purpose are other things employed by Him.

3. To grant the main thing is to grant the accessories. But actually to do follows upon actually to be: thus God is at once pure actuality and the first cause. If then God has communicated to other beings His likeness in respect of being, it follows that He has communicated to them His likeness in respect of action.

4. To detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of the divine power. But if no creature has any action in the production of any effect, much is detracted from the perfection of the creature: for it marks abundance of perfection to be able to communicate to another the perfection which one has oneself.

5. God is the sovereign good (B. I, Chap. XLI). Therefore it belongs to Him to do the best. But it is better for good conferred on one to be common to many than for it to be confined to that one: for common good always proves to be more godlike than the good of the individual. But the good of one comes to be common to many when it is derived from one to many, which cannot be except in so far as the agent diffuses it to others by a proper action of its own. God then has communicated His goodness in such a way that one creature can transmit to others the good which it has received.

6. To take away order from creation is to take away the best thing that there is in creation: for while individual things in themselves are good, the conjunction of them all is best by reason of the order in the universe: for the whole is ever better than the parts and is the end of the parts. But if actions are denied to things, the order of things to one another is taken away: for things differing in their natures are not tied up in the unity of one system otherwise than by this, that some act and some are acted upon.

7. If effects are not produced by the action of creatures, but only by the action of God, it is impossible for the power of any creature to be manifested by its effect: for an effect shows the power of the cause only by reason of the action, which proceeds from the power and is terminated to the effect. But the nature of a cause is not known through its effect except in so far as through its effect its power is known which follows upon its nature.* If then created things have no actions of their own productive of effects, it follows that the nature of a created thing can never be known by its effect; and thus there is withdrawn from us all investigation of natural science, in which
demonstrations are given principally through the effect.*

Some Doctors of the Moorish Law are said to bring an argument to show that accidents are not traceable to the action of bodies, the ground of the argument being this, that an accident does not pass from subject to subject: hence they count it an impossibility for heat to pass from a hot body to another body heated by it, but they say that all such accidents are created by God. Now this is a ridiculous proof to assign of a body not acting, to point to the fact that no accident passes from subject to subject. When it is said that one hot body heats another, it is not meant that numerically the same heat, which is in the heating body, passes to the body heated; but that by virtue of the heat, which is in the heating body, numerically another heat comes to be in the heated body actually, which was in it before potentially. For a natural agent does not transfer its own form to another subject, but reduces the subject upon which it acts from potentiality to actuality.* 

SOME find it difficult to understand how natural effects are attributable At once to God and to a natural agent. For (Arg. 1) one action, it seems, cannot proceed from two agents. If then the action, by which a natural effect is produced, proceeds from a natural body, it does not proceed from God.

Arg. 2. When an action can be sufficiently done by one, it is superfluous to have it done by more: we see that nature does not do through two instruments what she can do through one. Since then the divine power is sufficient to produce natural effects, it is superfluous to employ also natural powers for the production of those same effects. Or if the natural power sufficiently produces its own effect, it is superfluous for the divine power to act to the same effect.

Arg. 3. If God produces the whole natural effect, nothing of the effect is left for the natural agent to produce.

Upon consideration, these arguments are not difficult. 

Reply 1. The power of the inferior agent depends upon the power of the superior agent, inasmuch as the superior agent gives to the inferior the power whereby it acts, or preserves that power, or applies it to action; as a workman applies a tool to its proper effect, frequently however without giving the tool the form whereby it acts,* As then it is not absurd for the same action to be produced by an agent and the power of that agent, so neither is it absurd for the same effect to be produced by an inferior agent and by God, by both immediately, although in different manners.

Reply 2. Though a natural thing produces its own effect, it is not superfluous for God to produce it, because the natural thing does not produce it except in the power of God. Nor is it superfluous, while God can of Himself produce all natural effects, for them to be produced by other causes: this is not from the insufficiency of God's power, but from the immensity of His goodness, whereby He has wished to communicate His likeness to creatures, not only in point of their being, but likewise in point of their being causes of other things (Chap. XXI).

Reply 3. When the same effect is attributed to a natural cause and to the divine power, it is not as though the effect were produced partly by God and partly by the natural agent: but the whole effect is produced by both, though in different ways, as the same effect is attributed wholly to the instrument, and wholly also to the principal agent.